Murder of Frenchmen in the Holy
City: Continued Legacy of 14 Centuries of Holy Terror

Three expatriate French nationals* in Saudi Arabia were murdered
by machinegun-wielding terrorists on 26th February. A teenager,
wounded in the attack, became the fourth victim
two days later when he succumbed to injuries. The victims were on
a site-seeing tour across the kingdom with their families. The
gunmen targeted the adult males, leaving the females and children
unharmed, when they were camping in an area near the city of
Medina. Non-Muslims are barred from entering the city of Medina
and Mecca, the holiest cities in Islam. It is thought that this
breach or transgression may have been the motive for the attack.
Home-grown Islamist radicals in the kingdom, declaring
allegiance with al-Qaeda, have launched waves of terrorist
attacks over the last few years often targeted at foreigners in
their aim to drive the "infidel" Westerners not only
out of Mecca and Medina but also from the entire Saudi Arabia,
the holy land of birth of Islam and its holy prophet.

What lies behind this holiness of the city of Mecca and Medina
and the entire Saudi Kingdom for that matter is the tragic tale
of barbaric terrorism, which was orchestrated by the prophet of
Islam 14 centuries ago. The latest murder of the French tourists
is simply a continuation of the legacy. The prophet of Islam
started his mission of preaching a new religion in 610 CE in the
city of Mecca, dominated by the idol-worshipping pagans. His
messages were insulting to the religion and gods of Mecca people,
abusive to their culture and tradition and degrading to their
ancestors, which can be easily confirmed by reading the pages of
the Koran. Muhammad preached his religion for 12 years and people
of Mecca joined his creed freely, without ever facing violence or
threat of injuries, except that a two-year-long social
excommunication was imposed between 617-619 CE. Muhammad made
very little progress during 12 years of preaching in Mecca, which
lead the prophet to relocate, with about 50 Mecca followers, to
Medina in 622 CE, where his mission was achieving brisk success
in making converts.

The Mecca pagans steadfastly refrained from joining his creed,
naturally discouraged the fellow pagans not to join his mission
and did not allow him access to their holy temple of
Ka‚™ba on which Muhammad laid claim of belonging to
his God, Allah. This was affirmed when the victorious Prophet
yelled over the dead bodies of the Mecca pagans at the
battle-field of Badr (624 CE): ‚Have ye now
found true that which your Lord did promise to you. What my Lord
promised to me, that have I verily found to be true. Woe unto
these people! Ye have rejected me, your Prophet! Ye cast me
forth, and others gave me refuge; ye fought against me, and
others came to my help!" [Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul
Allah, trs. Guillaume, Karachi, p305-6] The Koran
also affirms the same: ‚..but graver is it
in the sight of Allah to prevent access to the path of Allah, to
deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out
its members. Tumult and oppression are worse
than slaughter.‚¶‚ [Q 2:217]

Shockingly, this simple rejection of Muhammad‚™s
creed and sticking to idolatry by the Mecca pagans became
tantamount to tumult and oppression, which in turn,
was considered worse than slaughter by Allah and
his apostle, defying all logic and reasons. It did not end there.
Muslims must take revenge for this so-called tumult and
oppression by fighting and killing their kinsfolk of
Mecca. To convince and force the hesitant believers, Allah sent
down a revelation making fighting the infidels binding upon them,
even if they didn‚™t like: "Fighting is
prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye
dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing
which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not".
[Quran 2.216]

In Medina where Muhammad became a refugee, the idolater tribes
quickly assembled under the umbrella of Islam. The prophet sought
to coax the wealthy and influential Jews (also probably some
Christians) to his apostleship by affirming their scriptures
(Torah & New Testament), sometimes erroneously, in his
revelation (Q 5:65-66) and by adopting many of the Jewish customs
and rituals such as fasting, circumcision and prohibiting pig
meat etc. When the Jews and Christians did not accept his
religion, the annoyed Allah parted with them: "And the
Jews will not be pleased with you, nor the Christians until you
follow their religion. Say: Surely Allah's guidance, that is the
(true) guidance. And if you follow their desires after the
knowledge that has come to you, you shall have no guardian from
Allah, nor any helper" [Quran 2:120].

With these sanctions coming down from the heaven, Muhammad got
the licence to launch a campaign of terror against the pagans of
Mecca and the Jews of Medina. In 624 CE, he attacked the Jewish
tribe of Banu Qaynuqa and the Banu Nadir two years later and sent
them to exile. In 628, he attacked the last Jewish outpost of
Banu Qurayzah and slaughtered their 600-900 grown-up males. The
women and children were captured as salves, the prettier women
were kept as sex-slaves and the rest were sold overseas for
horses and weapons. This was done with this sanction from Allah:
‚..Some ye slew, and ye made captive some. And He
caused you to inherit their land and their houses and their
wealth, and land ye have not trodden‚¶‚
[Q 33:26-27]

On the other front, Muhammad started raiding the life-sustaining
trade-caravans from Mecca passing through the major routes nearby
Medina in order to kill the oppressors of Mecca in revenge and to
loot the caravans. This led to a number of blood-letting
confrontations between 623 and 630 CE. By 630, Muhammad had
become so powerful that he breached an existing 10 years-long
treaty after only two years and attacked and captured Mecca. The
vestige of idolatry was blotted out from Mecca and larger Arabia
with the following sanction from heaven: ‚when
the forbidden months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye
find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare
for them each ambush... [Q 9:5]

In sum, Medina became the holy city of Islam, through the
banishment of the Jews from their centuries-old homes through
Muhammad‚™s terror resulting in their eviction, mass
slaughter and enslavement. On the other hand, Mecca became the
Muslim holy city by complete banishment of idolatry through
slaughter of some of the Mecca pagans and forcing others to
accept Islam at the pain of death [Q 9:5]. Not only Mecca and
Medina, the entire Arabia became holy for the Muslims and no-go
zones for the infidels when the prophet commanded to finish off
the Jews and Christians from Arabia in death-bed
‚that two religions should not be allowed to remain
in the Arab Peninsula." [Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah,
(trs. A Guillaume), Karachi, p523] Prophet‚™s last
wish was ruthlessly executed by his successors. In 638 CE, caliph
Omar expelled the Jews of Khaybar, who were allowed to stay when
Muhammad had conquered that outpost 10 years earlier. By the time
of 3rd caliph Othman (d 656), there remained no
Christians and Jews in the Islamic heartland of Arabian
Peninsula.

What is known as the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina and
the holy land of Arabia, thus, is the outcome of ruthless
terrorism perpetrated by the founder of Islam with the collusion
of the Islamic God. At the receiving end of it were the existing
pagans, Jews and Christians of the region, who suffered
disastrous tragedy. The founding of the Islamic holy land in
Arabia also marked beginning of unbridled terrorism, which
devastated vast parts of the world ‚stretching
from the banks of the Indus in the east to the shores of the
Atlantic in the West‚ in a very short time. This
also marked a barbaric legacy of terror that have continued for
the entire 14 centuries of Islam‚™s existence to
this day, which have resulted in violent death
of approximately 270 million people across the continents. This
legacy will probably continue until Allah‚™s promise
to ‚make them (Muslims) rulers in the earth as He
made rulers.." [Q 24:55] is fulfilled. The terrorist
attack in Medina, that killed four Frenchmen, is just the
continuation of that legacy of holy terror which the prophet of
Islam had started 14 centuries ago. So are all Islamic terror
campaigns in Iraq, Iran, India, Sudan, Somalia, Chechnya, Kosovo,
Thailand and elsewhere, which are ongoing across the world.

*
Reports suggest that some of the victims were Muslims, which the
terrorists probably could not know. [Hit Counter]